MEGATHREAD Flexible Fulfillment

[JohnSith373]

Jump on the line and help til it comes off the truck? That's about the only way to speed up finding it.
If I force close the epick app, does the cart pause or is it still considered "in progress"?

It’ll still be considered “in progress” but after 10-15 minutes, it’ll go to the “pause” cart status.

 

[Flex Xpert]

I pause when ever I'm doing anything besides picking the batch . And I can keep about a 70 on the pick productivity.i also run around an get my 15 thousand steps in.extra steps provided by awful pathing

 

[calimero]

Jump on the line and help til it comes off the truck? That's about the only way to speed up finding it.
If I force close the epick app, does the cart pause or is it still considered "in progress"?

Well , if it’s in a repack and not RFID , I would be there for a couple of hours !
I still pause the cart , therefore productivity metric is down the drain! But I will find it , unless it’s an opu , and have to find it before 8.30 am , and still have 45 eaches to look for ..

 

[HiddenPenguin]

I've been wondering: Could the pathing process work differently for OPU's/DriveUps vs normal picks?

If a bigger batch drops into OPU, I'd far rather pick my one bottle of dish detergent from the salesfloor than waste time getting the wav (and clearing a freaking path for the wav...) so I can get a casepack down. 🙄

... I completely get why doing this for all picking would just suck up more time down the road in autofills... but the number of items that would be impacted by just OPUs isn't that great, and sometimes those time limits are near impossible.

It also makes sense to me that regular pickers should backstock their own extras from casepacks (you're right there and it only takes a minute), but OPU pickers shouldn't be expected to.

 

[Dead and Khaki]

I want to be able to skip backroom locations. Sometimes I really am smarter than the system. Yes, the option could be abused, but that's why you don't hire lazy workers.

 

[unknown]

I want to be able to skip backroom locations. Sometimes I really am smarter than the system. Yes, the option could be abused, but that's why you don't hire lazy workers.

I had to pick one bag of Hershey's kisses out of a box of 24 8n the backroom. So I took it all with me out to mini seasonal to pick the rest of the batch thinking I'd just push it. The shelf was overflowing. But please oh please make me pull that one bag from the backroom. Dumb. I jackhammered the other 23 bags onto the shelf. Good luck to the poor guest who has to try getting one out now.

 

[OrderSickUp]

I'm mainly posting this as a reminder to myself: I will not be made to feel inferior because we miss goal time when I'm the only packer and doing OPUs because you sent everyone home due to payroll overages. One picker. One packer/OPUer. One cashier. No backroom.

 

[LearningTree]

I was told by STL, no. That's why we were told not to pause carts. Breaks needs to be timed to avoid pausing.

Yeah your STL doesn't know shit when it comes to Flex. As long as you're meeting goal times, there should't be an issue with pausing carts.


Edit to fix typo.

 

[Flex Xpert]

I haven't seen such tight payroll in December ever. We are even cutting and not replacing call outs. Bad sign?

 

[OldSchoolVet]

Yeah you doesn't know shit when it comes to Flex. As long as you're meeting goal times, there should't be an issue with pausing carts.

I simply answered a question with information received from my STL. No need to be rude in your reply.

 

[LearningTree]

I simply answered a question with information received from my STL. No need to be rude in your reply.

Sorry there was a typo. I meant to say your STL doesn't know shit. fixed it.

 

[Black Sheep 214]

I haven't seen such tight payroll in December ever. We are even cutting and not replacing call outs. Bad sign?

Very bad sign. The Modernization smoke and mirrors show is imploding before our eyes. What successful retail store cuts hours in early December?😳

 

[OldSchoolVet]

Sorry there was a typo. I meant to say your STL doesn't know shit. fixed it.

Thanks. Appreciate that.

 

[carafe]

The tape spits out quick, and it's warm and slimy. I don't notice it anymore but every new person I train says they wish I'd warned them.

That's my favorite part of training new people lol, "Yeah, just hit the button and grab the tape"

The varying degrees of disgust on their face makes it all worth it

 

[Bosch]

All of my TMs keep picking the whole casepack even when not all of it is needed. 🙄

I got one of those in a STS package today.. She ordered one, they pulled one case of hand sanitizer. I counted it as one and sent it down the line..

 

[Fulfillment TL😊]

Ok folks - I'm looking for ideas for improvements to ePick in 2019. Bonus points if they pertain to being more efficient in picking or they reduce INF.

Definitely being able to undo an INF. It would be all around beneficial to team members and guests. Too often things are found 15 mins after hitting can’t find

 

[mobilelady]

I've been wondering: Could the pathing process work differently for OPU's/DriveUps vs normal picks?

If a bigger batch drops into OPU, I'd far rather pick my one bottle of dish detergent from the salesfloor than waste time getting the wav (and clearing a freaking path for the wav...) so I can get a casepack down. 🙄

... I completely get why doing this for all picking would just suck up more time down the road in autofills... but the number of items that would be impacted by just OPUs isn't that great, and sometimes those time limits are near impossible.

It also makes sense to me that regular pickers should backstock their own extras from casepacks (you're right there and it only takes a minute), but OPU pickers shouldn't be expected to.

We are looking at picking first from the SF for OPU which would then avoid backstocking when pulling from a casepack location. TBD...

 

[Thunderbird1956]

Can someone explains how the productivity works? I picked three different OPU & DU orders at the same time one one three tier... but productivity says I only did 9 an hour....


*EDIT* Never mind, it updated to 60 per hour.

Jump on the line and help til it comes off the truck? That's about the only way to speed up finding it.
If I force close the epick app, does the cart pause or is it still considered "in progress"?

The STL was all excited when the productivity metric came out. But really it's a bogus metric if you pay attention to it and encourages inefficient action. Anyone that goes into a paused cart is associated with that cart so you could be picking 5 carts at a fast rate but if you go into a cart that's been sitting there for 4 hours and the last person looked at every item in the cart the time is also going to be on all the people. It doesn't matter whenever that cart gets finished that's when the metric gets applied.

Example TM1 paused a pick for tomorrow cart at 10PM on day A. TM2 comes in at 6AM on day A+1 sees a cart and scans it skipping all items because they see they are all softlines and doesn't want to pick softlines. So 2PM on day A+1 comes around and LOD sees a paused cart and had TM3 finish the cart.

On day A at 11:50PM
TM1 showed a speed of 70.
On day A+1 at 8:00AM
TM1 is off no speed recorded
TM2 showed a speed of 130
On day A+1 at 2:00PM
TM2 leaves still shows a speed of 130
TM3 has no pick speed
On day A+1 at 4:00PM
TM1 is off but shows a speed of 30.
TM2 now shows a speed of 15.
TM3 shows a speed of 5.

So in my district TMs tend to skip through what they need to pick to be able to keep an eye out for it on endcaps. This means that instead of a TM getting a rate of 70-150 per hour it shows a rate of 30-50 per hour the reason being the backroom locations are picked using the pathing that is provided so from the time you see the item to the time you pick it is relatively small, but depending on the floor locations you may have cycled through your list at least once or twice to get things to lessen steps. If you're doing softlines you're probably in the low 20s.

If on the other hand you just follow the pathing you're probably doing more steps but your rate appears better, however if you have a cart that's all backroom locations you're going to have a rate that appears super fast too. Or say you have all backroom locations except 3 you'll still have an exaggerated time. A better rate would be to separate out the backroom speed from the floor speed so you can see if someone's taking a long time in the backroom, which could be getting a Wave or it could be talking in a group, or maybe you have multiple backrooms so it's going to deal with time differently for that. Also if you're skipping over the backroom location there's probably a good reason like the label needs to be replaced or the product is behind the unload process and those are the carts that should maybe flag an alert. Personally I'd rather be able to click on an "in progress" cart to see how many tasks they started with and how long the cart has been active. @mobilelady

I'm almost 100% certain that the time for pack is from when the item has been seen so if your doing nothing but items labeled started your time will be slow. But if you're packing your own cart and have everything split by collate on the cart your apparent rate will be close to 150, because after you scan the collate nothing else pops up, but if everything is in location SHPPP01 then you have a lot more lag time between ending the scan and starting the next collate scan process.

When you hard close the cart is still in progress, but that timer is still counting.

 

[PackAndCry]

We are looking at picking first from the SF for OPU which would then avoid backstocking when pulling from a casepack location. TBD...

IMO, Wacos/open stock should be first priority, then sales floor, then lower case stock, then upper case stock, then bulk as a last resort. Especially since when we pull a casepack in a batch it seems to update the SFQ.

We definitely need the feature from myFA back where you see all the INFs again at the end of the batch.

 

[RhettB]

We are looking at picking first from the SF for OPU which would then avoid backstocking when pulling from a casepack location. TBD...

I'd disagree. This would only inundate the sales floor with bigger pulls that they already work until 7pm most nights.

 

[Dead and Khaki]

I'm not comfortable with everyone's "pick rate" being made public. Why does anyone except me and my TL need to know how efficient the system thinks I am? Why not just show us our own rate and the team's average?

Of course, this is all pretending the pick rate actually says anything useful about a TM's performance, given all the factors beyond our control affecting that number.

 

[Antennae]

Nice to know my rate will be in the gutter at all times since I seem to be the one left with the paused carts to finsh when I come in to close.

 

[Irdasur]

I'm not comfortable with everyone's "pick rate" being made public. Why does anyone except me and my TL need to know how efficient the system thinks I am? Why not just show us our own rate and the team's average?

Of course, this is all pretending the pick rate actually says anything useful about a TM's performance, given all the factors beyond our control affecting that number.

I find it funny that our STL yells pick metrics over channel 1. The metric in MPM seems pointless, because theres too many factors that makes it a flawed representation of the real situation.

 

[KirbyKirbs]

I'm a seasonal flex fulfillment person and nobody has ever told me my stats. I have no idea if I'm up to their standards. It would be nice if somebody would tell me if I'm doing okay. I paused a cart on Black Friday for 6 hours because it was all electronics picks and that section was insane so I parked that cart until the crowd cleared. Nobody told me I'm messing up Numbers. I guess I'm lucky.

 

[PackAndCry]

Does anyone else have the little bags with a slider zipper that they use for SFS? We got some with our refresh, but they aren't on the SFS order guide and I didn't see them on SAP. They're really useful for jewelry and nail polish.